On civilians and 'Israel's Gaza problem'

Wednesday, November 14: Israeli forces have just killed a four-year-old and a seven-year-old in Gaza. Two children.

Jeffrey Goldberg tweets*, correctly, that the fighting won’t solve anything. But his phrasing embodies everything that’s wrong with the mainstream media. It also points at the Israeli attitude towards both the Palestinians and the region:

The fatalities suggest it’s the other way around. According to B’Tselem, 6500 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces from the start of the Second Intifada in September 2000 until to September 30, 2012—4660 of which were Gazans. The same ten-year-period period saw 590 Israelis killed by Palestinians.

These are people. 1.7 million people live in Gaza. They shouldn’t be collectively referred to as Israel’s “problem.”

***

I get on the train to go to a protest in East Jerusalem. People are talking and laughing and smiling as though nothing is going on. People are dying in Gaza. I boil. I sit. Two teenage girls stand in the aisle next to me. Their chatter is mindless and light-hearted.

The girls are about the same age as the Palestinian students I teach at a university in the West Bank. One has told me about her aunts and uncles and cousins in Gaza. I wonder what she’s doing right now. I wonder if her family is okay.

I think about the Palestinian woman, Nisreen, I interviewed via the phone recently. Her kids are in Ramallah; she is stuck in Gaza with no work and no family and hasn’t seen her son and daughter in five years. When I asked Nisreen about Operation Cast Lead, she said that the hardest part was not what she experienced but her parents’ and children’s panic and fear as they watched the news in the West Bank.

The teenage girls next to me giggle. I can’t bear their laughter. I move and stand, tucking myself into a corner, as far away from the other passengers as I can get. A tall, large middle-aged man boards the train and, even though it’s not crowded, he manages to step on my foot. There’s plenty of room but he stands, oblivious to me or just not caring that I’m there, boxing me in with his wide back.

“Can you move?” I say. My voice is sharp. I push past him and walk into the next car. I want to get off this train.

***

Damascus Gate. Between 30 to 40 Palestinians have gathered to protest Israel’s “Operation Pillar of Defense.” Less than 50 meters away, an equal number of Israeli police are sitting in vans and milling about. The protesters are unarmed. Some of the Israeli forces wear riot gear; others wear bullet-proof vests, rifles slung across their chests.

A majority of the protesters are women. One of the demonstrators explains to journalist Jillian Kestler-D’Amours and me that most of the protesters are Palestinian citizens of the state who go to Hebrew University. There are very few East Jerusalemites here.

The demonstrators wave Palestinian flags and chant. They call on Palestinians to raise their voices; they call for freedom; they say, “Netanyahu, wait; Gazans will dig your grave.”

I’m struck by this last one because the timing of this operation suggests the opposite—pummeling Gaza seems to be Netanyahu’s attempt to pave the way for his re-election. What does this say about the Israeli public? What does this say about the people I live and love among?

After 50 minutes, the demonstration ends. As Jill and I leave, I remark on how few Palestinian Jerusalemites were at the protest. “It’s always like this,” she answers me, in Arabic.

Jill is an old hand at these demos and has covered both East Jerusalem and the West Bank extensively. She explains that many Palestinian Jerusalemites are afraid to come to the protests; they’re worried that the Israeli authorities will use their political activities as an excuse to strip them of residency, that they’ll lose what little rights they have.

***

Thursday, November 15: I wake up before dawn, thinking about Gaza, wondering what’s going on, when will it end, how will it end, how will I face my Palestinian students on Sunday, how can I look them in the eyes when Israel is doing something terrible in my name, when Israel is bombing their aunts and uncles and cousins and grandmothers?

My heart slams into my ribs. It goes on like this for I don’t know how long and then I feel my heart seize, stop. Start. The beat is erratic; I feel a ripple make its way through my heart. It feels like a worm is crawling through my chest. Pain shoots into my shoulder.

My heart finds its rhythm again. But I don’t feel better. I get up and check the news. Three Israelis in Kiryat Malachi have been killed by a Hamas rocket. The siren has sounded in the Kiryat Gat area; I lived, briefly, on a kibbutz down there. I remember digging up sweet potatoes from the earth. I imagine the land I sunk my fingers into: scarred and battered.

I want to get off this train.

*Another note on Goldberg’s tweet, in which he calls Ahmed Jabari a “terror commander.” The accepted, journalistic term is “militants,” not “terrorists.”

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COMMENTS

Jack

ThursdayNovember 15, 2012

One thought Gaza-war 4 years ago would have turned the tide, that the brutally would not be accepted another time, not to mention after the brutality in the Arab spring, that was eagerly condemned by western world (even to the extent that they may be arming them in teh case of Syrian rebels).

When I watch western “pundits”, discourse etc, I see overwhelmingly support for israeli actions. One just have to admit that palestinians have no rights whatsoever and no one is neither interested in pursuing to hear or interview their views on mainstream channels. This will inevitable lead to war crimes and acceptance of israeli policies. Not only are peace process gone, palestinians could be sure they wont be upgraded in the UN. Just like Israel wants and one of the reasons for the attack.

Reply to Comment

Richard Witty

ThursdayNovember 15, 2012

Please don’t be opportunistically obtuse Mya.

The description of the rockets as “Israel’s Gaza problem” is a representative description.

Reply to Comment

David

ThursdayNovember 15, 2012

The accepted term for people like Hamas who blow themselves up on buses and launch rockets with the sole intent of killing civilians is “terrorists”, not “militants”. I’m not sure where you made that one up.

Reply to Comment

rsgengland

ThursdayNovember 15, 2012

After reading this article , one must wonder wheather the author is one of those that would love to see Israel and its Jews just disappear into the sea.
Hamas and its supporters are fairly explicit in their wish for that to happen , as stated in their charter.
AND THEY MAKE NO DIFFERENCE IN THEIR THINKING BETWEEN JEWS AND ISRAELIS.
Don’t forget that their initial spiritual leaders , The Mufti of Jerusalem was a buddy of Hitler and thought very highly of his aims and intentions

Reply to Comment

Mark Kerpin

ThursdayNovember 15, 2012

Hamas is defined as a terrorist organization by the US, the EU, Israel, Canada and Japan.
Where does Mya get her alleged definition of
journalistic “terms”? The Iranian foreign ministry??

Ruth

Bertrand Russell, who in some ways wasn’t a nice man, remarked that when World War I began he found himself thinking, on a bus, that if people therein knew his opinions they would tear him apart.

Wait for this episode to end. Your stance is before your students, all the effective words that right now can be. Don’t let anyone put you in a category you do not affirm. Refuse the war lables on all sides.

Easy for me to say.

Reply to Comment

JFG

FridayNovember 16, 2012

Agreed with the others above. Mya, this is a pretty vapid post, quibbling over semantics.

Israel has a Gaza problem in the ball is in the court. Also, American media, and policy, pivots around Israel.

Reply to Comment

Maor

FridayNovember 16, 2012

Can someone please explain to me this ridiculous comparison of casualties that Maya is doing here, as if the side with more casualties is the “good side” we should support?
12 thousand rockets can kill more than 12 thousand people – but the population is in shelters, and Iron Dome stops most of the long-range rockets. The relatively low numbers of civilian casualties among Israel do not reflect an intention of Hamas and other militants to target a low number of Israeli civilians!!!

Reply to Comment

Zoey

FridayNovember 16, 2012

If you are planning on holding that against Israel, let me tell you that just yesterday 3 innocent Israelis were killed by a bomb. Why is that okay?
PS. Hamas are hiding among their people, innocent people and shooting, so when Israels army fights back they accidently kill innocent Palestinians. That is their plan in order to make Israel look bad. We all want them to be in peace. Just try and research wisely, both sides, to straight your picture straight.

Reply to Comment

Elisabeth

SundayNovember 18, 2012

You are completely right Mya, Gaza has an Israeli problem, not the other way around.

Reply to Comment

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Mya Guarnieri is a journalist and writer whose reportage and commentary has appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, Foreign Policy, The Boston Review, Al Jazeera English, The National, Outlook India, and Caravan. She has been invited to serve as a commentator on Israel/Palestine on the BBC and Al Jazeera, among others. Her short stories have been published in Narrative and The Kenyon Review; her essays can be found in The Jewish Quarterly, Slate, and Roads & Kingdoms.

She is currently working on a book about migrant workers and asylum seekers in Israel, Unchosen, which is forthcoming from Pluto Press.

Now based in South Florida, she spent seven years living in and covering Israel/Palestine; she is currently in Tel Aviv working on her book.

About +972 Magazine

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.

+972 is an independent, blog-based web magazine. It was launched in August 2010, resulting from a merger of a number of popular English-language blogs dealing with life and politics in Israel and Palestine.